


Hang me once, shame on you; hang me twice...

by whitchry9



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Angst, Deaths, Drabbles, Drowning, Feels, Gen, Hanging, Henry needs therapy, Heresy, Hurt/Comfort, Lots and lots of therapy, Platonic Relationships, Reflection, Torture Mentions, Unrelated chapters, descriptions of death, dying, idek okay, lots of dying, sadly I don't think it's going to happen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-02-28 21:39:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2748035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry Morgan reflects on his life... and deaths. So many deaths.</p><p>A series of drabbles that likely aren't connected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was a cool Tuesday morning when the trial took place. Henry didn’t like referring to it as a trial though, because a trial implied that there was equal chance of him being acquitted as he was to be convicted, which was not the case at all.

 

Rather, it was more of a matter of public spectacle, for them to throw things and ridicule him while the list of offences was read out.

He was pronounced guilty of heresy, and sentenced to death by hanging.

 

It was the first time he’d been hung, and he had to say, he didn’t think they were doing it correctly. It was slow and painful as he struggled to breathe, his feet kicking in the air like a fish tail once you’d pulled it out of water.

 

And then he died.

 

And if anything was going to cement their belief that he was some sort of witch or devil, disappearing was certainly near the top of the list.

 

He gasped back to life in a nearby river, clutching a hand to his throat, which had only moments ago been aching. There was nothing to show for it. He swam to shore, shivering.

Thankfully most of the village had been at the proceedings, so there wasn’t anyone to watch him pull himself out of the water, completely naked. He still didn’t understand that. Almost thirty years of dying later, and he still had no clue why he ended up back in water, or why he was nude.

Well, the water was slightly easier to understand. He’d been in water the first time. But he’d also been fully clothed that time as well, so that theory was moot.

 

Thinking back on the experience, he classified it amongst his other deaths.

Not even top five.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Technically speaking, when he told Abraham he'd had every ounce of blood drained, it wasn't entirely true.

 

Because yes, he'd been bled to death (a number of time, in fact, if he was going to get technical, but most of the other times were combined with severe trauma), but it was impossible for every ounce of his blood to be removed.

The fact of the matter was that a person didn't need to lose their entire blood volume to die. Sometimes only a third was sufficient, although it usually took half to two thirds before it was irreversible, in the present day and age anyway. So Henry exaggerated somewhat to get his point across to his son.

And it was a messy way to die. Not particularly painful, since blood loss was sort of similar to falling asleep and just never getting up, but god, the mess.

 

He preferred to not think about it.

 

But while he was on the subject of death by exsanguination, it often wasn't the cause of death so much as it was the mechanism of death.

The cause of death was whatever caused the injury that resulted in him bleeding out.

And then the mode of death, that tended to be homicide where he was involved.

Henry had been murdered far too many times in his (albeit extended) lifetime, that he was sad to say he'd figured out the best (if there was such a thing), and worst possible ways to go.

 

The worst ways to die tended to involve poisons.

At least with trauma it was over relatively quickly, whether because of blood loss, or even the shock alone, which tended to knock him out. Illnesses weren't much better than poison, but at least they tended to be less fatal, which left him the choice of sticking it out, or curing himself in a slightly more controlled manner. It was often a question of whether he felt up to disappearing at random, or if he was going to take the element of chance out of it, and kill himself purposely.

 

But poisoning… poisoning tended to be painful. And depending on the poison, it could take any amount of time to kill him.

So even with the extraordinary amount of pain he was in, sometimes he did manage to kill himself before the poison got him. Other times he was paralysed, whether from the poison itself or the resulting pain, and could only lie there waiting for death.

Those were the worst.

 

He'd broken his neck once, and as a result, lost control of his respiratory muscles. He suffocated laying there. He could still remember the terror of not being able to move, to breathe, to call for help (whatever good it may have been).

 

Burning and drowning were both awful as well.

The first time he'd been burned alive, he had horrible nightmares for weeks. He could still smell his hair and flesh burning. That was something he'd never forget.

He couldn't eat meat for months.

 

And drowning… no matter how many times he drowned, he would never get used to it.

After the first time, when he was thrown off the ship and left for dead, he appeared in the water again, only this time completely nude, and no longer bleeding from his chest.

He hardly had time to comprehend it before the waves pounded him back under the water and he died again.

It repeated over and over. He lost count of how many times he drowned and reappeared before finally making it to land. Even after crawling onto solid land, every time he closed his eyes, he could see only dark water, and his lungs ached with remembering the burn of salt water.

 

Drowning was at the top of the list for his least favourite way to die, for that very reason.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Henry was the first to admit he probably needed an awful lot of therapy. After all, he had been through some horrendous things, two world wars, many more smaller ones, countless horrifying deaths. He'd seen the depravity of humanity, and just how far a human could sink. He'd surrounded himself with death, and he knew it wasn't just an interest or some morbid curiosity.

 

But considering the last time he'd seen any sort of therapist was when Nora had him committed, well, he wasn't quite looking forward to going again. Even if times had changed.

 

But then there was one too many counts of public nudity, and the Chief decided some therapy was in order.

It was alright. It wasn't what he was expecting. Not that he was entirely sure what he was expecting, because surely they weren't still using waterboarding as a method of therapy, but it was better than he imagined.

Of course, then his therapist turned out to be the same man who kept trying to kill him, and Henry decided, for sure, that he would not be returning to therapy. Perhaps ever.

Even if he lived to be as old as Adam.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last one for now, but I'll leave it marked as incomplete, because there will likely be more whenever I think of things.


End file.
